Notes on Peruvian Copyright

 

 In my searching for new material, I came across a curious bit of animation from Peru.

 It's called La alfabetización, una herramienta de liberación or Literacy, a tool for liberation. It debuted in 1971 and was produced by the government to encourage efforts to eliminate illiteracy among the population. I don't think I've seen an animated work quite like it before. 

At that time, Peru was governed by a military Junta calling itself the Revolutionary Government of the Armed Forces.  Not the first, and sadly not the last, time Peru has fallen under the control of military strongmen. This Junta came to power via armed coup in 1968 and ruled until 1980. You may infer from its name that the mix of politics it promoted included strong social policies to address poverty and its ill effects on the population. Hence, initiatives like the animation above.

 The Junta was very active in using mass media to spread its messages, art and cultural works were funded via a mechanism called SINAMOS (National Mobilisation Support System). This raised the question of what this government's attitude towards Intellectual Property was and how that attitude affected current Peruvian culture. At present, Peru uses the life +70 years standard though that was not always the case, there were two major and important legal changes in 1961 and 1996 before that.

As far as I can tell, the Junta maintained the use of the 1961 law. As it stands, it's a little difficult to be certain with multiple legal acts in effect, some of which apply retroactively and some do not. Works that entered the public domain prior to 1971 remain in the public domain. Annoyingly, that's this interesting piece was released just after that. However, I believe this work is still in the public domain as the work was a creation of the government and Peru does not claim copyright on government works. Now, the current government is not the same government as the one that produced this short animation, but it was seen as the legitimate government of Peru internationally and 1968-80 is a long time, recognising it would cause quite a stir and would have to be made clear in the current legislation.